Apple launches the iPhone 4S. No iPhone 5 for you! [Updated]

Apple unveiled its next smartphone today, offering up the iPhone 4S. The new model doesn’t change the external design of its predecessor, but it’s got more impressive hardware inside.

And as had been rumored, it also makes use of Siri, a voice recognition and artificial intelligence technology it acquired last year. If it works as indicated during today’s keynote – the first hosted by new CEO Tim Cook since co-founder Steve Jobs stepped down – it promises to be the iPhone 4S’s most compelling new feature.

Here are the things you need to know:

• Sorry, kids, there’s no iPhone 5 this year. Instead, Apple will start selling on Oct. 14 the iPhone 4S. It has the same look and feel of the current iPhone 4, but has updated internals. It uses the same A5 processor as the iPad 2, has a full gigabyte of RAM and sports improved graphics capabilities. It also has an updated, 8-megapixel camera with a resolution of 3,264-by-2,448. It also will record 1080p HD video with image stabilization.

Apple is keeping the controversial external antenna band, but has tweaked it so it can switch between antennas, presumably if one is blocked by flesh. Although it still works only on 3G network, Apple claims it will deliver faster download speeds, up to 14.4 Mbps. Apple’s Chief Marketing Officer Phil Schiller said this competes with other phones’ 4G capabilities – something I’ll believe when I see.

The iPhone 4S will cost $199 for the 16-GB model; $299 for 32 GB; and a 64-GB model has been added to the lineup, at $399. All those prices are with 2-year contracts. Pre-orders start Friday.

• The iPhone 4 will continue to be sold, but with only 8 GB of memory and for $99, replacing the iPhone 3GS at that price point. However, the iPhone 3GS will live on, and will be free with a contract.

• Yes, Sprint is getting the iPhone 4S, along with AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile is not. If you listen carefully, you can hear T-Mobile executives whimpering quietly in the corner.

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• Apple will also launch its iCloud service on Oct. 12, which let you sync content via Apple’s servers to all your iOS devices. However, the fee-based iTunes Match – used to match music you didn’t buy from iTunes with songs from the service’s store – won’t go live until later in October.

• Apple also announced updated versions of the iPod Touch and iPod Nano, though the tweaks are minor. The newer version of the iPod Touch will use iOS 5, which means it can do text messaging via iMessage.

• The company also announced two new apps. Cards lets you design greeting and post cards that Apple will then mail for you. Yes, Apple is getting into the snail-mail business. Cards will cost $2.99 in the app store to create and send. The app itself will be free.

Find My Friends is similar to Google’s Latitude, letting you use the GPS in your phone to find the location of people. Of course, you’ll have to allow someone to see your location, and you can time-limit how long you’re visible. Still, this app should take stalking and spousal spying to a whole new level.

If you’ve got an iPhone 4, the 4S probably isn’t going to be enough to make you upgrade. However, the Siri integration could make the phone a lot more compelling, and to me could be a killer app.

It lets you use natural-language queries to do things on the phone. For example, you can say, “Send a text to Joe and say ‘you owe me $5′.” Siri then launches the text app with “You owe me $5″ in iMessage. You can take similar actions with calendar events or web searches. For complex queries, Siri talks to the powerful Wolfram Alpha search engine.

The Siri app has been available for awhile in the app store, and you can download it now (though it seemed to be overloaded this afternoon). However, there’s one thing it can’t help you with, as this screen shot below indicates.